Operation Mountain Recovery Read online

  He turned off the motor and turned in his seat to look at her. “Are you going to run?”

  The thought of taking off again into the cold night made her shiver, even though she was warm now. “No. Are you going to arrest me?”

  “I’m not doing anything until I know what happened.”

  She suppressed another shiver that she knew had nothing to do with the chill outside. He was going to question her, that was obvious. Only to be expected. It was his job, after all. And after he’d now saved her life a second time, she owed him answers, didn’t she?

  She’d be more certain of that if she had any answers to give him—answers that would make sense, anyway.

  And if she was certain her life was worth saving.

  * * *

  Brady hung up the phone and for a moment just stood there, staring at nothing in particular, his consciousness turned inward. He’d made the call at Quinn’s request, after doing a news search on a sheriff’s detective from their home county, Brett Dunbar. The name had rung a faint bell, and the instant the first entry popped up, an in-depth article on the toppling of their corrupt governor nearly a year ago now, it fell into place. Dunbar was the man who’d done it, who had unearthed the truth along with a dead body. Brady had read this exact article when it had come out, and he remembered mentally congratulating the man and noting his stellar record.

  And wondering whom the civilian assistance he’d mentioned but not named was.

  Now he knew. That assistance had been Foxworth. Quinn and his organization had helped take down one of the scum of the earth, a crooked, corrupt and murderous politician.

  “I trust them more than I do some cops,” Dunbar had told him in the call he’d just ended.

  “I got the vibe.”

  “It’s for real. I’ve never regretted trusting them, with whatever it takes. They’re the best help you could have. They want the results, not glory. Helps if you don’t ask every question that comes to you about how they get the job done, though.”

  “As in nonofficial channels?”

  “That are deep and wide and will get you where you need to go a lot faster. You got Cutter?”

  Brady had blinked. “I... He’s here, yes.”

  He could almost hear the smile in the man’s voice. “Hardest—and smartest—thing I did was learn to trust that dog. He doesn’t just know what he’s doing, he knows things he has no way of knowing.”

  “So they’ve said.”

  “Believe it. Your life will be a lot easier if you just quit fighting it.”

  And so, as he put the phone back down, it was the dog he looked at. The dog who was once more sitting at Ashley’s feet but looking at him. Steadily. Insistently.

  Fix it.

  Yeah, he could see it in those amber-flecked dark eyes, even if it did make no sense at all. But that was crazy—he was still a dog.

  “I know it’s a cliché about a dog being able to judge, but he knows people. We’ve learned we can trust him,” Quinn said quietly, as if reading his wavering. “And we trust that he’s not wrong about Ashley.”

  He turned to look at the man. Quinn held his gaze steadily, without flinching.

  Quinn’s the guy you want at your back. He was that in the Rangers, and he’s that now. I would trust him with my life. And have.

  Dunbar’s heartfelt words came back to him. There was no doubting he’d meant them. Between that and his neighbor’s oft-repeated declaration that the Foxworths had his undying gratitude, Brady made his decision.

  “I need to interview her,” he said, looking across the room to where the woman and the dog sat.

  “Of course. Suggestion?”

  “What?”

  “Let Hayley stay with her. You’ll get more.”

  Brady glanced at the woman beside Ashley, then turned back and studied the man for a moment. “How’d you find her?”

  He hadn’t meant to say that, but they were so perfect together, not just personally but clearly professionally as well, that he couldn’t seem to stop himself.

  Quinn gave him a rather devilish grin. “I kidnapped her. And her dog.”

  Brady blinked. Glanced at the woman and the dog, then back to Quinn. “A tiny bit of elaboration would be helpful.”

  The grin widened. “No choice. Classified operation she stumbled onto.”

  Foxworth, it seemed, was even more than he’d suspected.

  He walked over to where Ashley was sitting beside Quinn’s wife. He noticed a couple of pillows that looked as if they belonged on the sofa were tossed on the floor as if they’d been in the way, and next to them lay a sweater and a sock tangled together. He guessed what the Foxworths had been up to when Cutter had demanded they follow him. And wondered what it must be like to still be so crazy for each other after a year that you couldn’t make it to the bedroom.

  Alarm bells clamored in his brain. Sex on a couch should not be on his mind right now, especially with this woman here on said couch.

  He sat on the sturdy, lodge pole–style coffee table across from Ashley. “I’m listening,” he said, keeping his voice low.

  She gave him a glance that held as much fear as anything else, and he didn’t like it.

  “Why don’t you start with this morning?” Hayley suggested quietly. “When did you get up?”

  Ashley looked at the other woman, seemingly surprised by the simple question. But she answered it easily. “Kind of late. I...didn’t sleep well,” she said, with a glance at Brady he couldn’t quite interpret.

  “What did you have for breakfast?”

  Again she looked surprised. Brady saw what Hayley was doing, both lulling her with the ease of the questions and getting her into the rhythm of answering them. Together with her unthreatening demeanor, he could see it was effective. Just as Quinn had said. Even the dog seemed now content to turn it over to her. Cutter rose and walked over to a bed they’d obviously brought for him, given Alex didn’t have a dog, and plopped down with seeming contentment. Although he kept that rather unnerving gaze steadily on Hayley and Ashley as his chin rested on his forepaws.

  “Breakfast? I...a muffin.” She glanced at Brady. As if she were remembering that day at the bakery. Or as if she’d had the muffin because she remembered it. That unsettled him somehow.

  Hayley led her through what seemed like a routine, if quiet, day. Brady let her, although he had to rein in impatience for the good of the final goal, which was finding out what the hell had happened with her mother.

  Ashley answered a couple more ordinary questions, then Hayley, with a glance at Brady, asked quietly, “Where was your mother today?”

  “Oh!” Ashley sounded startled. “I should at least text my mom. She’s probably panicked by now.”

  Brady frowned as something occurred to him. He knew from being on the other end how easy it was to track people via their cell phones these days. In fact, he’d be surprised if, under the circumstances, her mother hadn’t made that easily possible.

  “Let me see your phone,” he said.

  She’d told them the phone, and the house key, had been in her pocket by force of habit when she’d gone on what she’d intended to be that one-way walk. Looking puzzled, she pulled it out and handed it to him. He swiped to the apps display and scanned until he found a version of what he’d been looking for.

  “It’s there?” Quinn asked. Brady looked up and met the man’s steady gaze, saw that he knew exactly what he’d been looking for. He nodded.

  “And active,” he said.

  “What?” Ashley asked.

  “A tracking app,” he said.

  Her brow furrowed. “A what?”

  “To track your phone’s location. Like parents use to keep track of kids.”

  “But I never...” Her voice trailed away. Then, in a much smaller voice, she said, “My mother.”

&nbs
p; “Probably.” Brady glanced at Quinn again. “Off?”

  “For now, I think. Until we have a better idea of what we’re dealing with.”

  Brady nodded, powered down the phone, then pulled out the SIM card. And Hayley repeated her question about Ashley’s mother. He sensed her increase in tension, but she answered easily enough. “She went to a charity dinner event. A fundraiser for the Civic Improvement Fund.”

  Hayley continued with a few more ordinary questions about the fundraiser. In the exact moment when he practically bit his tongue to keep from taking over this interview—she was getting answers, after all, and rational, calm ones—Hayley gave him another look and a slight nod, as much as saying, “Over to you.” And in that moment, he envied Quinn Foxworth tremendously.

  “When did she get home?” he asked, making certain to keep his voice gentle, nonthreatening, as Hayley’s had been.

  Ashley was looking at him now, and in those green eyes, a touch of pleading had joined the fear. He didn’t like that, either. “About eight thirty. I know because I’d just watched...some old video and was surprised at how late it had gotten.”

  “Old video?” He wasn’t even sure why he asked, it surely didn’t matter.

  “Of...my father.”

  There was such heartbreak in her voice, in her eyes, that his stomach knotted up again. He’d long ago had to accept that some sad stories hit him harder than others, but he had no explanation of why hers had nailed him to the wall. Or why her visible steeling herself to go on tugged at him so.

  “I really should let her know I’m all right. She worries so much.”

  Brady was pondering offering his own phone when Quinn pulled his out. He noticed now it was a rather distinctive device, with a set of physical buttons across the bottom, including a red one. Quinn pressed one of the others, opened an app, then held it out to Ashley.

  “Now untrackable,” he explained.

  Both Brady’s and Ashley’s brows lifted in surprise. He knew his own reaction was at the equipment, and his guess about hers was confirmed with her shocked words.

  “What are you saying?”

  “Nothing, except we need time to assess everything before we do anything that leads anyone straight to you.”

  “But...my mother?”

  “If she’s reported you missing, she may not have control of what’s done any longer,” Brady explained quietly. Not when Ashley would undoubtedly be reported as an at-risk missing person.

  “Oh.” Her voice had gone small again. He couldn’t imagine what it must feel like, to have so totally lost control of your own life.

  But she input the number and tapped in a message.

  The response was almost instant, and Brady guessed her mother had been anxiously hoping for contact. The exchange went back and forth several times before Ashley rubbed at her forehead as if she had a headache.

  “Sign off,” Hayley suggested. “Tell her you’ll be in touch, but for now, stop.”

  Ashley looked almost relieved and did so. She handed the phone back to Quinn.

  Brady wasn’t sure what made him ask, “Do you mind if we look?”

  Ashley looked puzzled but merely shrugged. “Go ahead. You won’t see anything you don’t already know.”

  Quinn was already scanning the texts. Without a word he handed the phone to Brady.

  Hi, Mom.

  OMG, honey, where are you?

  Somewhere where I can think. And rest.

  Whose phone are you on?

  A friend’s.

  What friend?

  It doesn’t matter, Mom.

  You need to come home. You need help.

  I’m fine.

  Clearly you’re not. Don’t be irrational.

  I’m perfectly rational right now. I just need to think.

  It will be all right. We’ll just forget about what happened.

  What happened?

  Just come home now. Dr. Andler is here.

  Brady guessed that had brought on the headache.

  I will. In a while. I just wanted you to know I’m okay.

  The string ended there. Brady frowned at the screen for a moment, thinking. Then he went back to his questions.

  “What happened when she got home from the fundraiser? Walk me through it, step by step.”

  “She seemed wound up, but she always does after those things. She has to be on all the time, you know, and it’s hard to come down from that. So I offered to fix her something to eat, because she rarely does at such functions. People are always wanting to talk to her, so she barely eats a thing, even at dinner functions.”

  There was a familiarity in her tone that made him ask, “You’ve gone to these with her?”

  She nodded. “When I first got here, I went to a couple. Before...” She let out a weary sigh. “Before things got too bad.”

  Before I got too bad.

  He heard what she’d meant as loudly as what she’d said. But he just went on, listening to her describe fixing the salad her mother had requested, slicing tomatoes, chopping onions.

  “After she finished, I started to clean up. I was going to run the dishwasher, then remembered I’d left the knife I’d cut everything up with on the counter.” She stopped then. Lowered her gaze. “I’m...not sure how it happened. We must have both reached for the knife at the same time. It was strange, she kind of grabbed at me when I picked it up. She got cut, and I tried to help her. That’s when I got her blood on me. I let go of the knife, of course...but...she acted like...she backed away, just staring at me with this awful expression.”

  She let out a long sigh. And suddenly Brady thought he understood. “You think she was afraid.”

  “Yes.” She looked up then, and he saw tears welling up again. “She’s been afraid for me, for a while now. But this was the first time I ever realized she was afraid of me.”

  “And that,” he said gently, “is what sent you to the lookout tonight? That had you thinking that was the only way out?”

  She nodded, and she looked so utterly broken it was all he could do not to pull her into his arms again. He’d always had the need to protect, to help, but he’d never felt anything like this fierce need to comfort. It was so overwhelming he had to stand up for the distance it put between them.

  He had to look away from her as he thought, tried to work through his unexpected emotional response to simple facts. He wasn’t sure how long it had been, but he was almost grateful when his cell signaled an incoming alert, giving him an excuse to turn and walk away a few steps.

  He pulled it out and tapped on the icon for the county alert system. As the app opened, he wondered what could be happening worth a county-wide alert on what should have been a quiet Sunday night.

  It was an all-points bulletin. But not one relayed from another agency, as they usually were here. This one had started not only here in this county, but in Hemlock itself. A felony want. Assault with a deadly weapon. One victim, minor injuries.

  And he stared as the bulletin scrolled past on the screen.

  Her mother’s text had said, We’ll just forget about what happened.

  And Ashley had seemed to have no idea what that was referring to.

  But this APB was for a knife attack.

  And the suspect was Ashley.

  Chapter 13

  Ashley knew something else bad had happened by Brady’s expression when he saw whatever it was that had come across his phone. And then he turned to look at her, and she felt a chill unlike anything she’d felt yet. The Foxworth dog was on his feet in an instant. The animal came back to her and sat, as he had before, at her feet, facing toward the deputy. As if he’d felt the need to put himself between them.

  And when she got a better look at the man, at his eyes, she understood why Cutter had moved. Crazy as it seemed, this dog she barely knew was
protecting her. Because this was the man bad guys saw, she guessed. Tough, cool, capable and strong enough to do what he had to do.

  “What is it?” She hated how quavery her voice was, but she couldn’t seem to help it. Not when he was looking at her like that.

  “An APB. All-points bulletin,” he added.

  She sighed. “My mother had already reported me missing again before I texted her.”

  “Not exactly.”

  He took a deep breath, then read what was on his screen aloud. “‘Wanted on suspicion of third-degree assault with a knife, Ashley Jane Jordan, female Caucasian, five two, dark brown and green. Last seen at the scene of the assault, the home of the victim, her mother, Hemlock mayor Alexander. Weapon is in custody, but suspect may still be armed.’”

  Suspect may still be armed.

  Somehow it was that last sentence that sucked all the breath out of her. That warning of danger. They were warning the people looking for her.

  Her.

  They were looking for her.

  She lifted her gaze to his face, knowing she was probably gaping but unable to care. He’d lifted his gaze from the screen and was looking at her, his expression utterly unreadable to her, his blue eyes frighteningly steady and assessing as he watched her. As if he expected her to...what? Run? Try to escape? Or, more ridiculous, attack him?

  Suspect may still be armed.

  At least they hadn’t said the old cliché, armed and dangerous. But then she supposed it was implied, if you believed she’d already assaulted someone. Quinn Foxworth had come over to stand beside him, and suddenly Ashley felt very confined.

  She felt the creeping advance of panic, but at the same time, she nearly laughed at the absurdity of it; they were ordering everyone to search for her when Deputy Crenshaw already had her practically handcuffed.

  Cutter moved then, leaning into her, and she desperately threw her arms around the dog’s neck, hugging him close, seeking, needing that odd sort of comfort he seemed able to give.

  After a moment Brady looked back and tapped the phone a couple of times, then held it to his ear. He didn’t bother to walk away, so obviously he didn’t care if she heard.